|4 min. Read|

After a hole in our garage wall, a rip in the interior of my SUV, and a scratch on the back of my SUV we got ourselves a ~ free ~ commercial grade Stairmaster treadmill…..that is being stored in our garage. We live in a northeastern climate, so in the middle of January a treadmill in your garage is pretty worthless. 

My fiance is very passionate about turning our basement into a home gym thrifted from Facebook Marketplace, which has been going remarkably well until we came across this free treadmill. 

The first mistake we ( and by we I mean my fiancé, but I’m not here to place blame, sorry sweetie if you’re reading this!) made was assuming this treadmill would fit in my car. So we headed over to the seller’s house to take the treadmill apart and put it in my car. We quickly realize the bolts are stripped and there is no way to get this treadmill apart to fit into my car. Eventatully, we called this trip a failure and decided we’d come back with tools to get the stripped bolts out. Well long story short, we could not remove the bolts and had to resort to shoving this treadmill our of the seller’s house…. Remember this is a commercial grade treadmill which is wider than the average homeowners door frame. 

After a split in the seller’s door frame we get the treadmill out. Then we go to put the treadmill into my car which is when we sustain the rip in my interior. This treadmill weighs what feels like 500 pounds as my fiance and I are trying to hoist it into the car. 

Once it is in the car, there is about 2 feet of treadmill hanging out the back of my trunk, so we use bungee cords to pull my trunk door down and secure it to the interior and head home like that. 

Since I needed my car for work the next day the horror story did not stop there and we had to get this thing out of my car. Two people working with a 450 pound treadmill (per the manual we googled online) with its uprights on was an impossible job which is why we ended up with a hole in our garage wall and the cement floor. While taking it out of the trunk we lost our grip and dropped the treadmill leaving us to watch it as it slammed right onto the concrete and rammed into the wall. 

From there we were just happy we were not the wall, as that seriously could have injured one of us.

Unfortunately there was still no way we were going to get this treadmill into our house without taking it apart. So after trying a few more non destructive methods of removing bolts, we finally bit the bullet and bought tools (saw and vice grip) to cut the bolts in half and extract them that way. This was successful ( truthfully I was pretty sure this thing was going to the curb so at this point I was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel)

Once we got the treadmill apart, we were able to move all of its components to the basement and reassemble it (with new bolts of course). 

What a sight it was to see this treadmill together in our basement, finally the saga is over!!! 

Or so I thought 🙂

I pick up the plug and hand it to my fiance to give the treadmill some juice and we realize we need a special outlet to plug it in…. We made it this far so off to the hardware store we go to get supplies for adding a new outlet.

We get the necessary supplies; outlet, outlet plate cover, a fuse, and electrical wire. After we cut the power to the house and added a new outlet we are finally in business to turn this treadmill on. 

We plug in the treadmill and it lights up!! I could equate this feeling to Christmas morning as a kid. I must say it was nice to get that feeling again, although it came at the cost of my sanity.

Note: for safety as we are not electricians, an electrician did certify the outlet prior to actually using the treadmill. 

In hindsight, I would have rented a U-haul and called in back up to move the treadmill to ensure safety for all parties involved, but here at the lemons drop you live and you learn!!